At any given moment, there are over 200 billion shrimps in farms – more than any other farmed animal. In fact, more shrimps are killed for food in farms than any other animal, with approximately 440 billion killed each year. As countries become wealthier, their consumption of shrimps increases, meaning this massive exploitation is likely to keep growing.
December 10th marks International Animal Rights Day, coinciding with
International Human Rights Day to highlight that all sentient beings
deserve protection. On this day, animal advocates across the globe
host events calling attention to animal exploitation while
envisioning a future with greater respect for all sentient beings.
At Animal Ethics, we want to highlight that this is a day to
remember the importance of defending animals and of ending
speciesism.
This year we want to talk about some of the most forgotten and
numerous victims of speciesism: shrimps.
Every day, hundreds of billions of tiny individuals are packed into
crowded ponds around the world. At any given moment, there are over
200 billion shrimps in farms – more than any other farmed animal. In
fact, more shrimps are killed for food in farms than any other
animal, with approximately 440 billion killed each year. As
countries become wealthier, their consumption of shrimps increases,
meaning this massive exploitation is likely to keep growing.1
Yet most of us have never stopped to wonder: What can they feel?
What is their experience like?
Imagine yourself in the place of a shrimp
Before we learn more about these beings, take a moment to reflect:
What do you think a shrimp feels? If you were in their body, what
sensations would you experience?
Meet Maya. She’s exploring the ocean floor, waving her sensitive
antennae to taste the water around her. Like you, Maya can sense
when water is too hot or too cold. Like you, she’ll quickly pull
away from anything that might harm her. Like you, she feels pain
when injured and seeks safety when threatened. In fact, the evidence
for shrimps’ ability to feel pain is so compelling that the United
Kingdom has legally recognized them as sentient beings.
Maya is a shrimp.
Discovering what shrimps feel
To understand what shrimps like Maya might experience, let’s look at
what scientists have discovered.
Do shrimps have the anatomical structures
to feel pain?
Just like we have special nerve cells to detect pain, scientists
have found that shrimps have similar cells throughout their bodies.
These nociceptors (pain detectors) send signals when they detect
harmful things. Like us, shrimps have centralized nervous systems
that can process these signals and create feelings of pain.
Do shrimps behave like they feel pain?
Scientists tested this by looking for complex responses that go
beyond simple reflexes. They found that shrimps:
What science reveals
Evidence of pain
When we look at all this evidence – their pain sensors, their
learning abilities, their responses to injury – what can we
conclude? These things don’t tell us exactly how shrimps experience
the world. We may never know precisely what it feels like to be a
shrimp. But we do know they have the physical structures to feel
pain and show clear signs of experiencing it.
Evidence of learning
Remember a time you touched something too hot and got burned. Even
weeks later, you probably approached similar objects more carefully.
Scientists have observed shrimps showing this same kind of learning.
This evidence of learning suggests shrimps feel pain, rather than
just reflexively responding to harmful situations.
Evidence of sentience is not absolute proof, but this evidence is
pretty strong. When hundreds of billions of individuals might be
capable of suffering, we have good reasons to be careful. Think
about it this way: if you saw someone about to step on what might be
your friend’s foot, would you wait until you were absolutely certain
it would hurt before warning them? Or would you speak up, just in
case?
We don’t need to be 100% certain that shrimps feel pain to decide
they deserve our consideration. The evidence suggesting they can
suffer is strong enough that we should take it seriously.
Behind farm walls
While shrimps evolved to move through open waters, using their
sensitive antennae to navigate and detect their surroundings, farmed
shrimps are packed together in crowded ponds. Think about how
overwhelming it feels when too many people are touching you at once,
or when strong smells or bright lights bombard your senses. Now
imagine your primary way of understanding your environment – like
our vision or touch – being constantly overwhelmed. This is what
farmed shrimps endure every day of their lives.
Approximately half of farmed shrimps die before even reaching
slaughter age.2 The water they live in often contains waste and
chemicals that would irritate their sensitive bodies. Many develop
likely painful infections because of these conditions.
When they kill the shrimps, exploiters typically pull them from the
water and pack the shrimps in ice while they are still alive.
Studies have shown that shrimps actively try to avoid water
temperatures that are too hot or too cold. Being packed in ice is
far more extreme than the temperature changes they have to endure in
nature.
The situation is even more dire when we consider that shrimp farming
is just one part of a larger problem. Every year, fishing operations
kill tens of trillions of shrimps,3 and a much higher number of
aquatic animals in total. In response to concerns about overfishing,
many organizations, including the UN’s Food and Agriculture
Organization (FAO), are promoting aquaculture – including shrimp
farming – as a more sustainable alternative.4 But this “solution”
would simply shift the suffering from wild-caught animals to farmed
ones, greatly increasing the total number of individuals subjected
to intensive confinement.
A new way of seeing
It’s understandable that we find it harder to empathize with shrimps
than with animals who look more like us. We can’t see expressions of
pain on their faces or hear cries of distress. But our difficulty in
relating to their experiences doesn’t make their suffering any less
real.
Some people say, “But they’re just shrimps.” Now that we know about
their ability to feel pain and distress, we have to ask ourselves:
does their small size or their difference from us make their
suffering less important? If a being can suffer, shouldn’t we care
about that suffering, regardless of what they look like or how
different they are from us?
The scale of this suffering is staggering – more shrimps are killed
for food than any other animal in the world.5 But numbers this large
can make us numb to what matters: each shrimp is an individual who
can feel pain and distress.
When we understand that shrimps can suffer, we have to ask ourselves
some important questions:
These questions aren’t about convenience or taste preferences.
They’re about what we owe to other beings who can feel pain,
distress and pleasure. Once we recognize that shrimps are
individuals capable of suffering, don’t we have a responsibility to
consider their interests when making our choices?
When we started this exploration, we met Maya, a shrimp using her
sensitive antennae to experience her world. We learned that shrimps,
like Maya, have the physical structures to feel pain, and they show
clear signs of experiencing it. We saw evidence that they actively
avoid harmful situations and remember what causes them distress or
gives them pleasure.
This knowledge comes with responsibility. While we may never know
exactly what it feels like to be a shrimp, the evidence of their
capacity to suffer is strong enough that we can’t simply ignore it.
Each of the billions of shrimps in farms is an individual who can
feel pain or seek what gives them positive experiences, just like
Maya.
The issue isn’t just about making their captivity less painful.
These are individuals who have their own lives to live. Even if we
could eliminate all suffering in shrimp farms, we would still be
wrongly depriving sentient beings of their lives. When we recognize
shrimps as individuals who can feel and suffer, we must question not
just how they are treated, but our assumption that we have the right
to exploit and kill them at all.
It’s crucial to understand this issue in its broader context. The
FAO and other international organizations are actively working to
expand and intensify aquaculture operations worldwide to meet
growing global demand for eating sea animals. That would lead to
tens or hundreds of trillions of aquatic animals confined and killed
every year.What changes when we stop seeing shrimps as tiny,
anonymous creatures and start seeing them as individuals who can
suffer? This shift in perspective asks us to examine not just what
we know, but what we’re going to do with that knowledge.
At Animal Ethics, we’re shifting more of our focus to the
exploitation of invertebrates, which is on a course to expand and
intensify in the next few decades. We’ve already seen early
campaigns by animal advocates lead to bans of octopus farming in
some US states before it even started, and a national ban is being
considered. Please support our work and help us continue to spread
awareness about the harms of invertebrate farming!
Further readings
Bae, S-H.; Tomoyuki; O.; Bong, J. K. & Wilder, M. N. (2013)
“Alterations of pattern in immune response and vitellogenesis during
induced ovarian development by unilateral and bilateral ablation in
Litopenaeus vannamei”, Fish Science, 79, pp. 895-903.
Perazzolo, L. M.; Gargioni, R.; Ogliari, P.; Margherita, A. A. &
Barracco, M. A. A. (2002)
“Evaluation of some hemato-immunological
parameters in the shrimp Farfantepenaeus paulensis submitted to
environmental and physiological stress”, Aquaculture, 214, pp. 19-33
[accessed on 27 November 2024].
Sainz-Hernández, J. C.; Racotta, I. S.; Silvie, D.; Hernández-López,
J. (2008) “Effect of unilateral and bilateral eyestalk ablation in
Litopenaeus vannamei male and female on several metabolic and
immunologic variables”, Aquaculture, 283, pp. 188-193.
Zacarias, S.; Carboni, S.; Davie, A. & Little, D. C. (2019)
“Reproductive performance and offspring quality of non-ablated
Pacific white shrimp (Litopenaeus vannamei) under intensive
commercial scale conditions”, Aquaculture, 503, pp. 460-466.
Notes
1 Waldhorn, D. R. & Autric, E. (2023)
“Shrimp: The animals most commonly used and killed for food
production”, Rethink Priorities, August 11 [accessed on 30
November 2024].
2 McKay, H. & McAuliffe, W. (2024)
“Pre-slaughter mortality of farmed shrimp”, Rethink Priorities,
March 12 [accessed on 29 November 2024].
3 Waldhorn, D. R. & Autric, E. (2023) “Shrimp: The animals most
commonly used and killed for food production”, op. cit.
4 FAO (2024)
The state of world fisheries and aquaculture: Blue transformation in
action, Rome: FAO [accessed on 25 November 2024].
5 Waldhorn, D. R. & Autric, E. (2023) “Shrimp: The animals most
commonly used and killed for food production”, op. cit.